Close call with the law changes his outlook

2:04 AM,
May 27, 2013

Flyers prospect Nick Cousins works out last week near his home in Bellville, Ontario.

Written by

Randy Miller
Courier-Post Staff

The 4-by-8 foot holding cells in the basement of the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, police station hold nothing more than a metal bed and toilet.

Nick Cousins, 19, and one of the Flyers' top prospects, sat alone in one of those cells for 12 hours last August, after he and two junior hockey teammates were charged in the sexual assault of a woman.

"That was probably the worst," Cousins told the Courier-Post in his first public discussion of the charges, eventually dropped. "I had no cell phone, no one to talk to. I had to just sit there by myself and realize what was happening, realize what could happen. So ...